Kanye West speaks on bipolar disorder, stigma
Doosuur Iwambe
Kanye West is speaking out about his mental health journey. The Grammy winner, who was hospitalized back in 2016, opens up about bipolar disorder during a candid new interview on David Letterman’s Netflix series, ‘’My Next Guest Needs No Introduction’’.
During the episode, airing May 31, West talks about his diagnosis and explains the journey he has been on over the past few years.
“What I want to say about the bipolar thing is because it has the word ‘bi’ in it, it has the idea of, like, split personality.
Well, that works for me because I’m a Gemini, but when you ramp up, it expresses your personality more,” the “Stronger” rapper tells Letterman.
“You can become almost more adolescent in your expression or border into places.
This is my specific experience that I have had over the past two years, because I have only been diagnosed for two years now.
“There’s no dumb easy way to explain, it’s just something that you know we’re going to have to take time to understand,” West continues.
“There’s things where you would’ve just locked your—you know, a hundred years ago they may have locked your uncle in the room…”
The 41-year-old star goes on to share, “I’m starting to research these things because the experience of when you go through an episode, if you actually go to the hospital, there’s a moment that I have to talk about publicly that has to be changed.
So, I’m gonna talk about this publicly so this moment can change. So, when you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything. Everyone. This is my experience. Some people have other experiences.
Everyone now is an actor. Everything is a conspiracy. You see everything. You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you’re being recorded. You feel all of these things.”
“And you get taken, and you have this moment. You feel everyone wants to kill you,” West says.
“You pretty much don’t trust anyone, and they have this moment where they put you, they handcuff you, they drug you, they put you on the bed, and they separate you from everyone you know. They don’t do that to pregnant women.
That’s something that I am so happy that I experienced myself so I can start by changing that moment…when you are in that state, you have to have someone you trust. It is cruel and primitive to do that.”
